Archive for September, 2008

Preserving alzheimer’s patients’ art

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

AlzheimersNotes.comArt often is as an activity for Alzheimer’s patients.  This might include acrylic or water color painting, shaping with clay, coloring with crayons or markers, quiltmaking, sketching, and mixed media.  It depends on the stage of the patient whether they can do much or even comprehend.However, many patients in the earlier stages of Alzheimer’s find enjoyment and relaxation in this form of creativity.   Many do amazingly well with assistance.Are you preserving this art?But it’s not good, you think.  It doesn’t have value.However, it has memories and leaves a legacy.    My mother-in-law didn’t have Alzheimer’s but was nearly blind.  We didn’t realize until after her death how many water color paintings she had done during group activities at the assisted living home.  And how lovely they are.One a grandson framed.  Another my daughter used as a design for a quilt hanging.  Others we’re copying so family members can have their own.  Also, we’re considering making notepaper and postcards of all of them. These will give her children, grandchildren, and great grands something of her artistic legacy.  Mum had never done any painting before.  So we’ve seen a facet of her through this that we wouldn’t have.So…preserve the legacies that come as serendipities.(Amazon image)(c)2008 Mary Emma AllenTags: , Alzheimer’s art, Alzheimer’s Notes, Alzheimers, alzheimers-activities, artist, Mary Emma AllenShare This (Source: Alzheimer’s Notes)

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12 steps- the road to recovery at the health and wellness channel

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

Here is a recap of all of the health and wellness channel’s 12 step posts… Thanks Liz at Healthbolt for doing the roundup!September is National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recover Month and in recognition of this, the bloggers at b5Media’s Health and Wellness Channel have put together their interpretation of the 12 Steps, looking at each step not just from it’s orginal intent but also in relation to their own blog topic. The result is an interesting and informative group of posting that provides ‘food for thought’ in own lives.We’ve all heard of the 12 Step Program, but most of us won’t be able to recite what each step was. That’s because we are lucky enough not to need to. But for thousands of people around the world, the 12 steps is their world.Mark over at A Dozen Steps lists the 12 Steps  that he believes are designed to bring the person who practices them to a spiritual awakening and a psychic change sufficient enough to bring about a radical change in thinking.Angelique from Breaking the Mirror starts off with Step 1 and finds that this step could just as easily apply to many addictions and disorders.Alicia from Mental Health Notes addresses Step 2, asking Can A Power Greater Than Yourself Restore You To Sanity’?Karen from Pink Ribbon Review looks at Step 3 as it relates to her and her life as a breast cancer survivor.Kelly from Grounded Fitness tackles Step 4, saying she believes everyone can benefit from doing a little honest soul searching.Kendra from A Hearty Life dicusses Step 5, saying we need to stop hiding behind our own excuses, problems and shortcomings and take responsibility for our own actions.Grace from Kids Health Notes contemplates Step 6, saying that while “defect of character” seems little to do with nurturing healthy children, in reality our weaknesses have a lot to do with keeping our children healthy and productive.At Diabetes Notes, Kendra moves on to Step 7, saying humility is not thinking less of yourself, it is thinking of yourself less.Breaking the Mirror, looks at Step 8, saying if she was to make a list, she would probably start with herself, to be perfectly honest. Then, she’d move on to her immediate family, and from there, branch out to friends.Alicia from Mental Health Notes further explores the twelve steps, this time looking at Step 9, asking ‘Should You Make Amends With Those You’ve Wronged?Kristina from AutismVox focuses on Step 10, find that the call to self-scrutiny and to reexamination of oneself has always been important to her as an aid in figuring out how to help her son Charlie who is autistic.Grace from Kids Health Notes looks into Step 11, saying she believes words can either bring life or death, curse or blessing, and that when we speak, or pray, specific words then something tangible takes place: Hope.And for Step 12, the final step, Breaking the Mirror addresses ways that anyone can carry the message about their addiction or illness.Tags: 12 step, addiction, alzheimers disease, anxiety, breast cancer, breastfeeding, cancer, depression, Diabetes, eco friendly, fatblogging, fertility, green blog, health, healthbolt, heart-disease, lose weight, mental health, sex, treatment, wellnessShare This (Source: Diabetes Notes)

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Hyperuricemia Predicts Cardiac Risk in Surgical Patients

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

Hyperuricemia in patients undergoing vascular surgery is predictive of late mortality and major adverse cardiac events, but not 30-day mortality, researchers report in the Oct. 1 issue of the American Journal of Cardiology.

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Resident-Led Heart Surgeries Not Linked to Worse Outcomes

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

Cardiac surgeries performed by senior-level residents resulted in similar long-term event-free survival as procedures performed by staff surgeons, according to research published Sept. 30 in a supplement issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

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Parkinson Pathways Branch Out in Flies and Mice

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

The tiny fruit fly Drosophila has served researchers well to unravel the function of genes linked to neurodegeneration in Parkinson disease…

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Older Adults Put At Risk For Depression Recurrence When They Suffer Restless Nights

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

Nearly 60 percent of the nation’s elderly have trouble sleeping, whether it’s a lot of tossing and turning or outright bouts of insomnia. While for most people sleeplessness can be annoying at best or unhealthy at worst, for elderly individuals who have suffered from depression in the past, poor sleep may be the first sign that a new bout of depression is coming on.

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Radiosurgery for brain cancer OK for elderly (Reuters)

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

Reuters - People 75 years of age and older with cancer that has spread to the brain respond about as well as younger patients to stereotactic radiosurgery, according to a recent report.

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A standard procedure for creating a frailty index

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

Background:Frailty can be measured in relation to the accumulation of deficits using a frailty index. A frailty index can be developed from most ageing databases. Our objective is to systematically describe a standard procedure for constructing a frailty index. Methods:This is a secondary analysis of the Yale Precipitating Events Project cohort study, based in New Haven CT. Non-disabled people aged 70 years or older (n=754) were enrolled and re-contacted every 18 months. The database includes variables on function, cognition, co-morbidity, health attitudes and practices and physical performance measures. Data came from the baseline cohort and those available at the first 18-month follow-up assessment.Results:Procedures for selecting health variables as candidate deficits were applied to yield 40 deficits. Recoding procedures were applied for categorical, ordinal and interval variables such that they could be mapped to the interval 0-1, where 0 = absence of a deficit, and 1= full expression of the deficit. These individual deficit scores were combined in an index, where 0= no deficit present, and 1= all 40 deficits present. The values of the index were well fit by a gamma distribution. Between the baseline and follow-up cohorts, the age-related slope of deficit accumulation increased from 0.020 (95% confidence interval, 0.014-0.026) to 0.026 (0.020-0.032). The 99% limit to deficit accumulation was 0.6 in the baseline cohort and 0.7 in the follow-up cohort. Multivariate Cox analysis showed the frailty index, age and sex to be significant predictors of mortality. Conclusions:A systematic process for creating a frailty index, which relates deficit accumulation to the individual risk of death, showed reproducible properties in the Yale Precipitating Events Project cohort study. This method of quantifying frailty can aid our understanding of frailty-related health characteristics in older adults.

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Time to Procedure After Heart Attack Should Be Increased

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

The recommended time to primary percutaneous coronary intervention in patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction should be increased from under 90 minutes to 90 to 120 minutes based on current evidence, according to a commentary in the Oct. 7 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

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Paper Alert—QC Inhibition Extinguishes Pyroglutamate-A?, Pathology

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

If pyroglutamate A? sounds like some sort of Alzheimer disease incendiary device, then could inhibitors of the enzyme that sparks pyroglutamate formation extinguish the disease?…

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